Not a huge fan of the top answer and pretty disappointed by it being voted so highly:
>The idea that electricity "does not exist" is just verbal sophistry along the same lines as "matter does not exist, it is frozen energy" or, "you do not exist, you are a figment of your own imagination". At best these are all just over-dramatic and misleading ways of saying that what these things actually are is not what you probably think they are. At worst, misguided eccentrics create "straw" definitions of such well-known words just so they can burn them and trump them with their own untenable notions.
"You do not exist" or "matter does not exist" might be unhelpful sophistry or they might be thought-provoking invitations to a deeper discussion. It depends on the context and the intent.
If this blogger is "basically sound at an experimental and phenomenological level", isn't demanding public denouncements and retractions from everyone using the term "electricity", and has no shortage of thoughts and elaboration about his "eccentric" thoughts on the subject then what exactly is the harm here? Where is this user's uncharitability and hostility coming from?
Drilling into definitions, or "quibbling over semantics" if you prefer, isn't always fun for everybody but that doesn't mean there's an inherent need to come in and break up the party.
I think the top answerer had a few electric bugbears they wanted to get off their chest. Best skipped over, and time spent looking for simple and thoughtful answers. It's a shame the stackoverflow model isn't proving effective for that oft-asked question.
I remember one of my physics professors at uni explaining this theory and for some reason, I had this weird anxiety at the thought. A lonely electron doing all the work of every electron in the universe. Semifun fact, Feynman used the electron traveling back in time analogy to help teach the principles of QED.
The theory also has some merit at least in the boundaries of QED, it's impossible to draw a QED Feynman diagram where the arrows representing positron/electrons just stop, each one must eventually reach the other end of the diagram.
It doesn't quite work as you move beyond that, you get stuff like neutrons decaying into protons and electrons (and some neutrinos somewhere). Unless of course you take seriously consider Wheeler's suggestion that the positrons might be hiding in the protons.
Given that gravity has been observed to work on antimatter the same way as it does on normal matter, doesn't that refute this? or is there another aspect of symmetry that keeps it consistent?
>The idea that electricity "does not exist" is just verbal sophistry along the same lines as "matter does not exist, it is frozen energy" or, "you do not exist, you are a figment of your own imagination". At best these are all just over-dramatic and misleading ways of saying that what these things actually are is not what you probably think they are. At worst, misguided eccentrics create "straw" definitions of such well-known words just so they can burn them and trump them with their own untenable notions.
"You do not exist" or "matter does not exist" might be unhelpful sophistry or they might be thought-provoking invitations to a deeper discussion. It depends on the context and the intent.
If this blogger is "basically sound at an experimental and phenomenological level", isn't demanding public denouncements and retractions from everyone using the term "electricity", and has no shortage of thoughts and elaboration about his "eccentric" thoughts on the subject then what exactly is the harm here? Where is this user's uncharitability and hostility coming from?
Drilling into definitions, or "quibbling over semantics" if you prefer, isn't always fun for everybody but that doesn't mean there's an inherent need to come in and break up the party.